ShinyShiny tech roundup: Elon Musk sells $5 billion Tesla shares


Tesla chief executive Elon Musk has sold around $5bn (£3.7bn) of shares in the electric carmaker. It comes days after he asked his 63 million Twitter followers whether he should sell 10% of his stake in Tesla. The company’s shares fell by around 16% in the two days after the poll came out in favour of him selling shares, before regaining some ground on Wednesday. Tesla is the world’s most valuable carmaker, with a stock market valuation of more than $1tn. Mr Musk’s trust sold almost 3.6 million shares in Tesla, worth around $4bn. He also sold another 934,000 shares for about $1.1bn after exercising options to acquire nearly 2.2 million shares, according to filings with the US stock market regulator. BBC 

What would it be like to walk around the ancient religious sanctuary of Olympia when the Olympic Games were held? An unusual partnership between Microsoft and Greece’s Ministry of Culture and Sport is offering visitors the answer, launching an immersive tour Wednesday at one of the world’s major archaeological sites. The program at ancient Olympia harnesses augmented reality technology that designers say has the potential to transform education, business and entertainment. Critics warn it will extend the invasive power of U.S. tech giants. The culture ministry helped Microsoft map and build virtual representations at Olympia, a site used for nearly a thousand years to host the games in ancient Greece that served as the inspiration for the modern Olympics. AP News 

Phones aren’t finished at launch, with companies often adding new features over time through software updates, and one such feature seems to have just landed on the Google Pixel 6 and Google Pixel 6 Pro. According to Mishaal Rahman (a tech journalist), his Pixel 6 now has an Adaptive Sound feature. This is something that allows the phone to improve the sound quality from its internal speaker by using the microphone to assess the acoustics near you and then adjusting the equalizer to suit your environment. It’s a feature that we’ve already seen on the Google Pixel 5 and Google Pixel 4a 5G, but it was absent from the Pixel 6 range at launch. According to Rahman it just appeared on the settings screen, so keep an eye out for it. Tech Radar 

 

People are being urged to be wary of WhatsApp messages and texts from friends they know claiming to be in need. A new awareness campaign launched by WhatsApp and National Trading Standards says that 59% of people have either received a scam text in the last year or know someone who has. The Stop. Think. Call. campaign aims to inform potential victims about the scams and educate them on how to protect themselves and their WhatsApp accounts. Scammers can hijack WhatsApp accounts, often by using accounts they have already hijacked, to message friends and contacts asking for help. Often these “friends in need” claim that they are sending their WhatsApp security code to the victim and ask for it to be sent back to them – however this security code belongs to the victim and enables the criminals to hijack their account. Sky News 

Ford and Purdue University are partnering to develop a new charging station cable compatible with vehicle charging technology still being developed with hopes of making a broader transition to electric vehicles possible. Purdue researchers are trying to develop an alternative cooling method to prevent battery overheating with a charging cable that can deliver an increased current. The cable uses liquid as an active cooling agent, which can help extract more heat from the cable. If successful, it would deliver significantly more power than the current technology used to re-charge electric vehicles, potentially speeding up the process if used with technology that is being developed now. Researchers say charging times for electric vehicles could eventually be on par with filling up a car at a gas station. Yahoo! 

Chris Price